2020 - Dataw Historic Foundation

Alexander Hamilton’s Unexpected Beaufort Connection

Bill — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 16:49:49 +0000

The theme this week is a SMALL WORLD. In the years leading up to our Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, Beaufort was a thriving shipping port. One of the prominent merchants operating along the bay in Beaufort was Peter Lavien (1746 - 1781). He moved to the town in 1765 from Sankt Croix, then under Danish rule. (Today St. Croix is part of the US Virgin Islands.) The small world connection I discovered involves his younger half-brother. The brother eventually also moved to the Colonies from Sankt Croix but landed in Boston in 1772. Today, I'm going to tell you a bit more about the families of both brothers.

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Antebellum Christmas on Datha Island

Bill — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 21:15:40 +0000

Christmas in the Lowcountry of South Carolina will be celebrated this week, as it has been for centuries. However, back in the antebellum days, the planters celebrated one way, and the enslaved in a much different way. Like the plantation system, which was imported from Britain, the Christmas traditions when the Reverend James Julius Sams (1826 - 1918) reflected on his childhood around 1835 - 1840 on Datha Island were probably more British-inspired than German. Julius begins his reflections about Christmas this way,
"Christmas was the merriest and saddest time. The merriest, because we were all together. The saddest, because the time was coming for us to part again."

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Sad State of Education in 18th & 19th Century South Carolina

Bill — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 01:00:30 +0000

Virginia B. Bartels summarizes the history of education in South Carolina very well. "Much of the 300-year history of our public schools is a tragic tale of fits and starts, marked at times by inspired leaders, but too often mired by problems of class, race, war, poverty, and geography."

I believe receiving a good education is a primary reason so many Sams could rebuild their lives after the Civil War's devastation. However, they received this education because they were lucky enough to be born into a family that could afford to pay for a good education in a time and in a place where this was not common. The sad state of childhood education in Beaufort in the antebellum era was not just about money. You may be surprised to learn that British tradition also played a vital, negative role.

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19th Amendment – Rights of Suffrage for Women

Bill — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 14:10:17 +0000

This article is in honor of our 19th Amendment, which changed our country dramatically.

The Amendment’s journey from Seneca, New York, to our U.S. Constitution was long and torturous. Dataw Island has four people connected to the Women’s Suffrage Movement: Sarah Barnwell Elliott, Kate Gleason, Fanny Sams Bell, and Conway Whittle Sams. Sarah was a women’s suffrage movement leader at the state and national levels. Kate was the great industrialist who purchased Dataw Island in 1927. Fanny was one of the millions of women across the nation who proactively worked for women’s rights. Conway, a lawyer in Virginia, was vehemently against giving women the right to vote!

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Closure

Bill — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 10:10:30 +0000

We have often told you how the events of Nov 7, 1861, led to the immediate evacuation of all plantation owners from Beaufort District. And you've heard most lost everything as a result. The Federal government, of course, fully intended to shut the door on the old South. A war was going on, and both sides needed to fund their war efforts. For the Federal government, the legal steps started with the Direct Tax Act of August 1861, which levied taxes on all states and was amended in June 1862 to include the rebellious states as well. This led to Federally appointed tax commissioners arriving in Beaufort later that year. Foreclosures on South Carolina homes and land followed. This included all of the Sams real estate in the Beaufort District. However, there is more to the story. Thirty years later, the Federal Government compensated the Sams heirs and others for their confiscated real estate.

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Lower Coast American Indians

Bill — Tue, 31 May 2022 16:00:49 +0000

Like all of the United States, the Lowcountry was inhabited by indigenous peoples when Bonum Sams II (1663 ~ 1743) and John Barnwell (1771 - 1724) immigrated here in 1681 and 1701, respectively. Long before William Sams (1747 - 1798) bought Datha Island in 1783, the conflicts between Europeans and American Indians had played out here in the Lowcountry. The American Indians were gone from this corner of South Carolina. It may surprise you to know that nineteen American Indian tribes lived in our area at one time. We are reminded of the American Indians by the river/estuary names even today.

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Crypt of Sarah (Fripp) Sams (1789 – 1825)

Bill — Thu, 12 May 2022 20:47:18 +0000

Several years ago (2006 - 2009), DHF had some preservation work done to the brick wall around the Sams Family Cemetery near the plantation house tabby ruins. We discovered several buried pieces of marble, and the adventure began. This is the story of the final resting place of Sarah (Fripp) Sams (1789 - 1825), the first wife of Lewis Reeve Sams (1784 - 1856).

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Sams Family Cemetery – Datha Island, South Carolina

Bill — Tue, 03 May 2022 02:00:30 +0000

I told you recently about the tripartite plantation house of BB Sams and his wife Elizabeth (Fripp) Sams. These ruins are always the highlight of the DHF docents' tours to residents and visitors. The other site of interest is the Sams Family Cemetery, a short distance from the ruins. I wrote about this 200-year-old cemetery on Datha Island just two years ago, and there has been an exciting development. Synthesizing the research Teresa (Winters) Bridges (Sams descendant) has done in the last two years with the results of the ground-penetrating radar survey performed in 2005, I can say with confidence that her ancestor John Sams (1769-1798) is buried here on Datha.

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Dataw Island on Datha Island

Bill — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 11:00:27 +0000

In response to an article about Northern Datha Island, a resident who has lived here thirty years (!) commented, "I have always questioned why ALCOA did not call the Island by its real name: Datha?"
Researching this question took me on a fascinating journey from a Muskogean Indian Chief to the King of Spain to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. In the end, I can provide this answer; Dataw Island is the name of our development on a sea island in South Carolina called Datha Island.

What's left for this journey is to explain why our sea island is called Datha Island and why our development is called Dataw Island.

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Tabby Times 2020 Fall

Bill — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 00:48:49 +0000

Tabby Times - Fall 2020 - The Dataw Historic Foundation is fortunate that Sams's descendants have entrusted us with several family heirlooms. One such item is a green taffeta silk gown. This gown has been in possession of the DHF since 1998, when the owners, Norman Ralph Pippin, Jr. and his sister Pauline Sams Pippin Sanders, donated it to us. This year we discovered its secrets.

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Reflections

Bill — Tue, 29 Dec 2020 01:26:55 +0000

It was 237 years ago that William Sams and his wife Elizabeth Hext bought Datha Island and started the journey that led to Alcoa South Carolina Inc. and the residential community we know as Dataw Island. I’ve really enjoyed writing the 52 Sams in 52 Weeks series this year. It has been a labor of exploration and discovery from the Dataw Historic Foundation for the island residents and Sams descendants. Now it's time for a break. Rather than continue the weekly rhythm, I plan to cut back to ‘whenever.’ History comes from memories, from experience, from events both personal and public. I will be following the truth of these, and I will write again as the stories inspire me. [1]

From my experience this year and your feedback, it is clear that "history matters to people on this island."

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Listen to History

Bill — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 13:00:39 +0000

52 Sams in 52 Weeks is now on its final approach. We are about to put the landing gear down (week 50), land (week 51), and taxi to the terminal (week 52). These last three posts have a lot of variety. Week 50 - Listen to History. Today you’ll hear a story of recent history. Week 51 - An Antebellum Christmas. On December 22nd, I'll tell you what we know about Christmas on Datha in the mid 1800s and about antebellum Christmases in general. Week 52 - Reflections and Resolutions. On December 29th, I'll reflect on 2020 and talk about what comes next in 2021.

Listen to History: The first recording below is of a Dataw Island resident that spent two years building the Sams Plantation House model, prominently displayed in your History & Learning Center. The second recording is an excerpt from an original letter written by Sarah Sams to her husband, Dr. Robert Randolph Sams, while he was away in the Civil War. Her distant cousin reads the excerpt.

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Short Stories

Bill — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 16:21:47 +0000

Throughout 2020 I've taken or accumulated images that have not made it into this 52 Sams in 52 Weeks series - but they deserve some attention. Here are pictures which span about 150 years, each with their own short story. Most have never been published. Many came from the storage bin in Miss Ting's home in Beaufort. This week I present a collection of pictures from our DHF shoebox, with short stories.

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Northern Datha Island

Bill — Sun, 08 Nov 2020 20:17:11 +0000

This week I focus on the history of the north half of our island. Datha Island has been inhabited continually from the Late Archaic period (3,000 - 1,000 B.C.) up to the present. I'll address the prehistoric periods, the Lewis Reeve Sams ownership years, and farming after the Civil War. I am indebted to archaeologist Larry Lepionka and his team for their work back in 1987-1988 to investigate and document the historic sites on Dataw Island. The island would be covered in a forest if left to nature. This is one factor that distinguishes the northern from the southern half of Datha Island. The north half was plowed and cultivated continuously from the mid-1700s to 1960; the southern half was not. The northern half is also where the preponderance of evidence was found for Native American habitation as far back as 3000 B.C. Therefore, where the Native Americans once lived was also the area most disturbed by farming in the 19th and 20th centuries. Kudos go to Lepionka and other archeologists for rediscovering their presence thousands of years before. I'll explore middens, and then I'll show you Domino.

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Gone Too Soon

Bill — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 21:21:18 +0000

The theme this week is ‘gone too soon.’ Through Week 43-Spooky, I’ve told you about 188 ancestors or descendants of William Sams and Elizabeth Hext. Nearly all are in their direct lineage, though there are a few distant cousins in the mix. I’ve told you about all seven sons of William & Elizabeth, but not all their families. Three sons never married (Robert, William, Jr., and Francis), and I have not told you much about the families of John and Edward Hext. Maybe I will someday, but I just have not had time to do the research necessary to ‘bring them to life.’ However, several children of our Sams brothers, Lewis Reeve and Berners Barnwell, I’ve not mentioned either. This week I’ll speak of the children that left us too early.

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Spooky

Bill — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 11:44:21 +0000

The theme this week is SPOOKY. Since Halloween is this week, I thought it would be fun to dig up (ugh!) a few of the scary stories Reverend James Julius Sams included in his memoir about being a kid on Datha Island. So today, I'll tell you a few spooky stories from the early 1800s. One happened in the Big Woods on Datha Island, one on St. Helena Island, another on Oak Island, and the last in the BB Sams plantation house.

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On the Map

Bill — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 12:11:21 +0000

The theme this week is "On the Map." I am starting my journey to find places named after SAMS descendants of William and Elizabeth SAMS of Dataw Island (i.e., toponyms.) The name SAMS presents the familiar genealogist's challenge, so generic it's easy to find, but hard to determine if it's the SAMS you want. Therefore, I started local, where we have some certainty of places named after 'our' SAMS and began working my way around the Southeastern U.S. I discovered some unexpected places 'in the family,' so to speak, and one place with a heavy SAMS fingerprint on it right here in Beaufort, SC.

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Products of Datha Island

Bill — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 11:00:19 +0000

The theme this week is “Products of Dataw Island.” Some time back, the Dataw Historic Foundation published a series of short articles about our history. I’ve republished two of these below that address what was grown on Dataw, as early as the mid 1700’s

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This Old House – a Photo

Bill — Tue, 15 Sep 2020 11:00:26 +0000

The theme this week is “This Old House - a Photo,” not related to that great PBS program, but the Dr. B.B. Sams house. In my week 12 and week 15 articles, I described the Sams Tabby Complex, with an emphasis on the house, the most distinctive feature of the ruins on Dataw Island. One of the world’s foremost experts on tabby construction, Colin Brooker, has just published the definitive book on tabby architecture in Beaufort, South Carolina and the Sea Islands [Brooker]. The Dataw Historic Foundation will be writing a book review soon, but in anticipation of that, I thought you might be interested in seeing the earliest image ever taken of the BB Sams house.

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Martha Sophia Hallonquist LaRoche (1874-1975)

Bill — Tue, 08 Sep 2020 10:30:11 +0000

My theme this week is "oldest"; the Sams direct descendant that lived the longest. Martha "Mattie" Sophia Hallonquist LaRoche lived to celebrate her 101st birthday. There are several distinctive aspects of Mattie's life. She was born near Charleston, S.C on Wadmalaw Island, was married at age 16, to a man 23 years her senior, and raised a family in Merritt Island, Florida area - long before air-conditioning. You can get a sense of their new "neighborhood" in the photo above.

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Reverend J. Julius Sams

Bill — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 13:15:43 +0000

Dataw Historic Foundation members and visitors to our History and Learning Center know of the Reverend James Julius Sams. His memoir, written I believe at the request of nephew Conway W. Sams in about 1905, is unique. No one else has written such an intimate first-person account of growing up on Dataw Island, SC. And his recollection of details about the family and his father's (Berners Barnwell Sams) house on Dataw has been quoted by acknowledged experts in their fields such as Lawrence Rowland and Colin Brooker. This week I have included J. Julius Sams' memoir in its entirety in the Sources section below. Enjoy reading about Dataw & Oak Islands circa 1840 thru the adventures of two boys, Julius and Horace Sams. In the meantime, let me tell you a bit more about Reverend J. Julius Sams, the man.

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What’s in a Name?

Bill — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 12:00:48 +0000

This week is about what NAMES can reveal. As an amateur genealogist, I know that names can provide clues to a person’s past but can also present a brick wall. Discovering the ancestors of William Artman Riski is much easier than John Smith. Sometimes a naming pattern can provide us leads that we might otherwise overlook. This week I investigated the names of the seven sons born to William and Elizabeth Sams and found several surprises, including a British tradition.

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Long Line

Bill — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 12:00:40 +0000

The theme this week is LONG LINE. Many of the ‘Datha Sams’ followed a journey over the generations away from Beaufort. Some left to pursue their dreams elsewhere (e.g., Edward Sams to GA and FL), others were pushed out by the Civil War and chose not to return. A few returned after the war and stayed, creating a long line of living in Beaufort. The long line in South Carolina began before William and Elizabeth’s purchase of Datha Island in 1783. It extends back to ancestors born in the U.S. in the 17th Century.

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Newsworthy – Anderson Childe Bouchelle (1908 – 1993)

Bill — Tue, 14 Jul 2020 12:00:18 +0000

The theme this week is NEWSWORTHY. In Week 7, I told you about the Sams descendants that the Roney’s discovered on a trip to Florida. I ended that article with this statement,

“A Sams descendant owned a controversial painting claimed to be the only portrait Eva Perón posed for in her life! Yes, that Evita!” A newsworthy mystery for sure. The man behind this story is Anderson Childe Bouchelle (1908 - 1993).

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My Father’s Life

Bill — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 12:30:23 +0000

The theme this week is MY FATHER'S LIFE. Elizabeth Exima Sams (1831 - 1906) was born March 16th, 1831, to Elizabeth Fripp and Dr. Berners Barnwell Sams. Her mother was 17 when she married Dr. Sams and bore him eleven children before she died in childbirth with daughter Elizabeth. Fortunately, Elizabeth E. Sams lives a long life in South Carolina. A year before her death, she travels from Beaufort, South Carolina to Norfolk, Virginia, to visit her nephew, Conway Whittle Sams (1864 - 1935). While there, Elizabeth tells her nephew all about his grandfather, her father, Dr. BB Sams. We have no similar first-person accounts of any of the other six brothers (i.e., William and Elizabeth Sams sons).

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Middle of an Era

Bill — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 13:09:02 +0000

The theme this week is MIDDLE. We are at week 26 and half-way through 2020. This gave me an idea for a new historical perspective on the Sams. Just imagine, when Dr. Lewis Reeve Sams, Jr. and his brother Miles Brewton Sams were in their teens - so were Abraham Lincoln, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. What these have in common is 1822. The Sams era on Datha Island started in 1783 and ended abruptly in 1861. The middle of that period was 1822.

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Widows – The Three Grand-Daughters

Bill — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 12:00:33 +0000

The theme this week is WIDOWS. Since June 23rd is International Widow’s Day, I decided to do some analysis on our Sams genealogy database and see what it reveals about widows in the Sams families of the 19th century. Our genealogy database contains over 2500 people. That’s way too many people to sift through and find the widows. The area I’ll be focusing on is a family tree with William & Elizabeth Sams at the top. The second and third generations below them are mostly complete. Still, for about one-third of the women, we have insufficient information to determine if they lived to adulthood and married. I’m going to identify the WIDOWS who are direct descendants in these first three generations of SAMS, counting William & Elizabeth as the first generation.

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Unexpected – Lewis Reeve Sams & Frances Yonge Fuller

Bill — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 12:41:01 +0000

The theme this week is UNEXPECTED. For a long time now, we’ve had beautiful copies of portraits of Dr. Berners Barnwell Sams and his first wife, Elizabeth Fripp. Yet, as you can see in this article, the same is not true for his older brother Lewis Reeve Sams or his first wife Sarah Fripp. All we have are poor quality black and white portraits. I’ve always hoped we would someday find better portraits. A few weeks ago, I had a eureka moment.

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Uncertainty – Grateful to Andrew Robinson

Bill — Tue, 02 Jun 2020 12:10:55 +0000

This week’s theme is UNCERTAINTY. Take, for example, who is buried in the Cotton Dike Cemetery? This story begins in 2004 with an interview with two brothers, then wanders through monuments, ground-penetrating radar, a rededication ceremony, and the British territory of Saint Helena Island. It ends with the recent graveside service of Andrew Robinson. We are grateful to Andrew, his brothers, and his nephew for bringing a measure of certainty to our Cotton Dike cemetery.

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Live Tour of DHF Website

Bill — Thu, 21 May 2020 14:00:00 +0000

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22nd Annual Oyster Roast – POSTPONED

Bill — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 21:00:00 +0000

POSTPONED DUE TO PANDEMIC PRECAUTIONS — 22nd Annual Oyster Roast – Monday, March 23, 2020 in Sams Plantation Ruins. Includes buffet dinner by Jimmy Fitts & music by The Remnants…

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Kate Gleason, Libby Rowland, and Beaufort in the 1920’s

Bill — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 16:00:00 +0000

Listen to one of Beaufort’s favorite historians, Dr. Lawrence Rowland, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of South Carolina Beaufort, talk about his mother’s connection to Kate Gleason, one of the first…

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Annual Fireside Chat

Bill — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 22:00:00 +0000

Featuring Dennis Cannady Dennis is an authority on Roberts Smalls and a Scale Model Craftsman. Make reservations online through the DIC web portal.

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